Mile Marker
Yesterday was a numerically insignificant anniversary of my birth (assuming you ignore that bit in the picture from yesterday where I went on about reaching an age I remember my grandmother being), so I took the afternoon and ran up to Illinois Beach State Park in Lake County, just south of the Wisconsin border. I walked around in the snow and ice for a while, stopping every so often to set up my tripod and take a picture of myself in a position that looks more precarious than it is. I'm on ice next to the lake, but it's sitting over the beach. I might break a leg if I fall through, but I won't drown.
If you've been following this page for more than 365 days, you might remember that I post a similar picture taken on my birthday every year that I put in an album called "Mile Marker," then do math to calculate how many miles the Earth has dragged me around the Sun. This year, the odometer rolled up 30,975,442,308 miles, all spinning in a corkscrew as the Sun pulls us all along around the center of the Milky Way. That's a lot of miles. I should probably ask for the high-mileage blend the next time I get my oil changed.
One advantage to having a birthday in February is that you can't really tell what my weight is doing in these pictures, unless I take the picture someplace in the South or global climate change has sent an unusually warm winter to Illinois. It's been a cold winter this year, but the yellow coat gives you a bit of an idea, because I haven't been able to wear that coat for a while. After years of increasing mass, I've finally managed to reverse things and have lost about 40 pounds since the last one of these Mile Marker pictures. (Which ... well, my camera was dying, so it's hard to tell with how dark that picture was, but that blue coat was looking pretty tight.) Now I'm back down around where I was when I had Robin take this Mile Marker picture almost a decade ago. I won't pretend to have accomplished this through hard work and sacrifice. It owes more to a doctor scaring the bejeezus out of me with heart monitors and insulin injections, then handing me one of those fancy miracle drugs. I make no apologies for jumping on the miracle drug craze.
Mile Marker
Yesterday was a numerically insignificant anniversary of my birth (assuming you ignore that bit in the picture from yesterday where I went on about reaching an age I remember my grandmother being), so I took the afternoon and ran up to Illinois Beach State Park in Lake County, just south of the Wisconsin border. I walked around in the snow and ice for a while, stopping every so often to set up my tripod and take a picture of myself in a position that looks more precarious than it is. I'm on ice next to the lake, but it's sitting over the beach. I might break a leg if I fall through, but I won't drown.
If you've been following this page for more than 365 days, you might remember that I post a similar picture taken on my birthday every year that I put in an album called "Mile Marker," then do math to calculate how many miles the Earth has dragged me around the Sun. This year, the odometer rolled up 30,975,442,308 miles, all spinning in a corkscrew as the Sun pulls us all along around the center of the Milky Way. That's a lot of miles. I should probably ask for the high-mileage blend the next time I get my oil changed.
One advantage to having a birthday in February is that you can't really tell what my weight is doing in these pictures, unless I take the picture someplace in the South or global climate change has sent an unusually warm winter to Illinois. It's been a cold winter this year, but the yellow coat gives you a bit of an idea, because I haven't been able to wear that coat for a while. After years of increasing mass, I've finally managed to reverse things and have lost about 40 pounds since the last one of these Mile Marker pictures. (Which ... well, my camera was dying, so it's hard to tell with how dark that picture was, but that blue coat was looking pretty tight.) Now I'm back down around where I was when I had Robin take this Mile Marker picture almost a decade ago. I won't pretend to have accomplished this through hard work and sacrifice. It owes more to a doctor scaring the bejeezus out of me with heart monitors and insulin injections, then handing me one of those fancy miracle drugs. I make no apologies for jumping on the miracle drug craze.